Mr Wrestling X

Agreed, very similar thing happened with Shelton Benjamin. He went from getting clean pinfall victories over Triple H, to jobbing to up and comers on WWECW. A real wasted talent.

1. lol2. lol 3. Not sure, haven't seen enough of them but I'm doubtful. 4. Workrate = no. Overall, maybe. 5. Nope. 6. Haven't seen enough of them to properly comment on. 7. They were awesome in OVW where technical wrestling was appreciated but the WWF dropped the ball almost entirely with the team. 8. Yeah... 9. Nope. Not even close, man. 10. They had two excellent hardcore brawls with Cactus Jack outside of that, I am drawing a blank as to where their real significance lays. Sure, they had longevity as a team, had foreign tours, were in a movie, but outside of that, I wouldn't personally rank them above PG-13. I'm enjoying your write-ups Dylan, and I will provide more commentary later on today/tonight/tomorrow morning I did state that those were teams off the top of my head that I thought PG-13 were better than @Dylan Waco, who was confused over it being a troll post...Those are ten teams in my opinion whose overall work rate and credibility as a tag team is less than that of PG-13 I don't consider Demolition that much of a big draw, they were the hottest tag team in the WWF at one point, however they declined due to the additions of teams like The British Bulldog's, The Hart Foundation and, of course The Legion Of Doom. As for the Nasty Boy's, barring their Florida Championship work in the late 80's..they quickly became stale and failed to make that much of an impression in either WWF or WCW. In fact, most people know Brian Knobb's for his 'Pit-Stop' gimmick in the late 1990's, wrestling hardcore matches against 3 Count in WCW Your criteria is a lot different than mine. You seem to be putting emphasis on how over/famous teams were where I couldn't give a shit about that for the purposes of this discussion. Also most people don't know Brian Knobbs at all. So what is the purpose of your discussion? First of all you derailed my thread and then claimed that PG-13 are in the top 10 greatest tag teams...When stating that, you have to consider all elements including wrestling ability, athletic prowess, marketability and of course how over a team is. If its workrate you are looking at, then you should have specified that clearly in your post.

Sgt. Slaughter definitely springs to mind as does Honkey Tonk Man. Vader could be considered a victim of this, between 1993 and 1996 he was one of the biggest headliners in American wrestling, a multiple time WCW champion and a top draw. As soon as he joined the WWF he went from having matches with Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker, to losing to Ahmed Johnson and becoming a punch bag for the debuting Kane

Actually, Its worse, I'm confusing Keiji Mutoh with Masahiro Chono for some reason!! Very slow day today, apologies! But yeah, Masa was booking informally, up until recently in NJPW. Now that he's become an freelance wrestler, I'm at a loss to say who the booker(s) could be. But I think Gedo and Jado is in the ballpark.

1. lol2. lol 3. Not sure, haven't seen enough of them but I'm doubtful. 4. Workrate = no. Overall, maybe. 5. Nope. 6. Haven't seen enough of them to properly comment on. 7. They were awesome in OVW where technical wrestling was appreciated but the WWF dropped the ball almost entirely with the team. 8. Yeah... 9. Nope. Not even close, man. 10. They had two excellent hardcore brawls with Cactus Jack outside of that, I am drawing a blank as to where their real significance lays. Sure, they had longevity as a team, had foreign tours, were in a movie, but outside of that, I wouldn't personally rank them above PG-13. I'm enjoying your write-ups Dylan, and I will provide more commentary later on today/tonight/tomorrow morning I did state that those were teams off the top of my head that I thought PG-13 were better than @Dylan Waco, who was confused over it being a troll post...Those are ten teams in my opinion whose overall work rate and credibility as a tag team is less than that of PG-13 I don't consider Demolition that much of a big draw, they were the hottest tag team in the WWF at one point, however they declined due to the additions of teams like The British Bulldog's, The Hart Foundation and, of course The Legion Of Doom. As for the Nasty Boy's, barring their Florida Championship work in the late 80's..they quickly became stale and failed to make that much of an impression in either WWF or WCW. In fact, most people know Brian Knobb's for his 'Pit-Stop' gimmick in the late 1990's, wrestling hardcore matches against 3 Count in WCW

Not quite, he did defect to AJPW, but he continued wrestling with NJPW on a part time basis from 2002-2009. During this time he was also responsible for booking some of the matches, if I recall correctly.

Agreed, a Japanese wrestler is unlikely to break kayfabe even to his or her family in some cases. I really enjoy NJPW, you can be assured that 90% of every card contains world class wrestling. I'm particulary partial to the Junior Heavyweight matches as they set a standard sometimes that Dragon Gate couldn't hope to follow. I'm always impressed with how NJPW handles their 'Gaijin's', look at Matt 'Giant Bernard' Bloom, he went from being a nobody in the WWE to a world renowned brawler and top big man in NJPW. As for booking, I was under the impression that Keiji Mutoh was the lead booker, but that has probably changed.

I'll be honest, I don't really think PG-13 were all that great as a tag team. Sure, their run in USWA was entertaining, but asides from that, they never really built much ground and thus hardly anyone remembers who they were. As for the list... (emboldened is for teams that I think are better than PG-13) 1. Arn & Tully 2. Rock & Roll Express 3. Fantastics 4. Midnight Express 5. Jumbo & Tenryu 6. Choshu & Yatsu 7. Misawa & Kawada 8. Misawa & Kobashi 9. Misawa & Akiyama 10. Kawada & Taue 11. Footloose 12. Can-Am Express 13. Doc & Gordy 14. Orient Express 15. Hardy Boys 16. Dudley Boys 17. Edge & Christian 18. Benoit & Malenko 19. Windham & Hennig 20. Freebirds 21. Hansen & Brody 22. The Funks 23. Hansen & Gordy 24. Tenryu & Kawada 25. Jumbo & Taue 26. Owen & Davey 27. Faces of Fear 28. Harlem Heat 29. The Enforcers 30. British Bulldogs 31. Hart Foundation 32. The Rockers 33. Rose & Somers 34. Inoki & Fujinami 35. Adonis & Murdoch My own addition of 10 teams that I think PG-13 are better than... 1. Too Much/Cool 2. The All American Males 3. Jim Duggan and Nikolai Volkoff 4. Demolition 5. The Harris/Blu/DOA Brothers 6. The Johnson's 7. The Basham Brothers 8. Axl and Ian Rotten 9. Right To Censor (Bull Buchanan and The Goodfather) 10. The Nasty Boys

There has been some really good points raised in this topic. It hasn't gone unnoticed by the wrestlers though. I see a lot of tag teams that show similarities to greats of the past. Naturally, wrestling in itself is an art based on influence and innovation. WWE has rejected many core elements of wrestling, particulary in the last 10 years. A couple of years ago, when Matt Striker was commentating on WWECW he took a cool old school approach, using his knowledge of wrestling around the world to highlight the legacy of the art. I cannot remember the last time a WWE commentator said "Shades of Insert Name" when a wrestler performs a well known move. We get it from time to time in TNA and ROH, but its something that is missing from several of the bigger promotions. Jim Ross would often compare newer tag teams in the early 2000's to tag teams and/or wrestlers of the past. At one point it was pretty much a given that in any Jeff Hardy match, there was going to be at least one comparison to Shawn Michaels. Triple H's flying knees are still occasionly referred to as "Harley Race-like" but a few years ago, Triple H was all but regarded as the Harley Race of his generation. I've heard that Trips considers this a real compliment. But back to tag teams...I think some of the decline could be contributed to the end of the territorial days. Take the Road Warriors for instance, their reputation came from wrestling in different territories throughout the 80's, by the time they set foot in promotions like JCP/WCW and WWF they were household names and extremely over. It was exactly the same with the original Midnight Express, The Rock 'n'Roll Express and of course, The Fabulous Freedbirds. Its safe to say that in some cases, the major promotions contributed to the fall in popularity of some of these tag teams. Hawk and Animal never really made it that big in the WWF, but that can be contributed to WWF not fully utilising the gimmick that wrestling fans had come to know from the Roadies' stint on the circuits. As far as I can tell, tag team wrestling is still a big deal in Japanese promotions. Interestingly enough, the current IWGP Tag Team Champions are Karl Anderson and Matt 'Giant Bernard' Bloom. In the case of Matt Bloom, WWE never really gave him a chance, his team with Test in 2000 had a lot of potential, but they were quietly pushed out of the main tag team picture which consisted of the Hardy's, Edge and Christian and The Dudley's. He then went on to form a career killer of a stable with X Pac, before doing the comedy thing with Scotty 2 Hotty. His last gimmick as 'A-Train' was probably the best chance he had of being a WWE main eventer, but again they blew it with him. The fact of the matter remains, Bloom is now one of NJPW's top 'Gaijin's', he's won the New Japan cup, the G1 Climax Tag League twice, had several notable victories over 'Ace's' and he's been in two highly successful championship tag teams , first with Travis Tomko and now with Karl Anderson. It would seem that tag team decline has its roots in the American promotions.

Some argue that Ultimate Warrior winning against Hogan damaged his career, since Hogan pretty much stole the spotlight. Bob Backlund's 8 second loss to Diesel for the WWF Title, pretty much ended Backlund's career as a credible performer, although Backlund's style of performing was pretty much over when Vince brought in guys like Hogan, Savage and Ultimate Warrior. Triple H definetly hurt several careers (although minor) in his 2002-2005 dominance. Insisting on winning against Goldberg, when the fans were just getting into his latest run, pretty much destroyed it before it got off. His series with Randy Orton, where barring a Survivor Series match, was dominated by 'The Game'. Most recently in the E, CM Punk's constant losses to the likes of Orton have severly tarnished him as a performer. Punk isn't quite at the level of Jericho, where it doesn't matter if he loses because his character and ability to deliver in a match is what keeps him over. I think with Hogan's ego, its just that. He's never really seen anyone as being his equal in popularity and that is what the motivation to insist on winning has been when someone has asked him to do a job. On the rare occasions Hogan has been open to losing, its usually because he has a friendship or respects the wrestler going over. With Ultimate Warrior, it was a question of money, Hogan knew there was going to be a big payoff and realised that Warrior was probably not going to last. So with pressure from Vince, Hogan decided to do the job for Warrior and then used his ability to connect with audience to look like he came out the winner. Hogan was more open about losing in his last WWE run in 2002, but if you notice, the only people he lost cleanly to were the ones considered the top guys (Rock, Undertaker and Angle). Bare in mind, also, that Hogan refused to put Steve Austin over when a potential match was brought up, even though the payoff would likely have been huge. Hogan's ego goes beyond money, it would seem.

Absolutely, but the thinking with the bigger companies is that their top draw must have the top title. Look at WWE at the moment, the top faces on both shows hold the World Championships. No one can deny that John Cena is the biggest draw in the WWE, but he just doesn't need to hold the World title, he's over no matter what. The same can be said, albeit to a lesser degree about Randy Orton. Most of the IWC were pissed that Orton ended Christian's title reign after only two days so they piled on the hate, without understanding the reason for it being wrong. The reason it was a bad move, was because Orton doesn't need a World Championship to carry a brand. From 2005 to 2007, Randy Orton was the hottest heel in the WWE, in that two year period, he didn't hold one World Championship. My feeling is that they should have left the title on Christian and built him up, whilst having Orton involved in a top line feud with someone else on Smackdown. The same goes for John Cena, he's actually more entertaining (if you can say that) when he's not chasing the gold or holding the title. His feuds with JBL and Batista in 2008 were a real breath of fresh air. The beginning of the Cena/Nexus angle was a great start, although it didn't end up as a acclaimed storyline. Look at Undertaker, he is so over, that his matches at Wrestlemania steal the show and the streak means more than any World Championship or accomplishment in the WWE. Its something the fans get invested in and its arguably the most successful long running angle that WWE have ever done. This is exactly what I was thinking. The Tag Team Championships meant more in this period of time than they ever have any other time. There were numerous excellent matches contested for the titles involving some tag teams that were more over than 90% of the talent on the roster. As you said, singles stars would often team up and compete in the tag team division and many feuds were built around tag teams. The beginning of Stone Cold Steve Austin's heel turn was all about his tag team with Triple H, the World Championship didn't matter here, it was all about them as a team and their feud with Undertaker and Kane over the straps.

I'm pretty sure that anyone who calls themselves a 'wrestling fan' has noticed in the last couple of years, there has been a steady decline in tag team wrestling. So why has this happened? Lets examine WWE first... The last time a tag team in WWE could call themselves 'credible champions' was last year when the Hart Dynasty held the belts (and to a lesser extend, Drew Macintyre and Cody Rhodes). There was a really good build to the Hart Dynasty becoming champions. Starting with a push, post Wrestlemania, DH Smith and Tyson Kidd were quickly built with the excitment from Bret Hart's return still in focus. They defeated Big Show and The Miz to earn a shot at the titles and on an episode of Raw, where they were extremely over, defeated the champs for the belts. It seemed like the E was finally taking stock again of tag team wrestling again, but...It wasn't too last, the Hart Dynasty were slowly phased out, despite the initial amount of acclaim they recieved. At Night Of Champions, Drew Macintyre and Cody Rhodes won the titles, after the Hart Dynasty were eliminated by the Usos. With talk of DH Smith leaving to give MMA a shot and Tyson Kidd struggling on Superstars, it would appear that a once promising tag team have past their sell by date in the eyes of the WWE creative team. In the last few months, the tag team titles have changed hands several times. At Bragging Rights, David Otunga and John Cena won the tag team titles, the following night they handed them over to Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater. Two months later, the comedy team of Santino Marella and Vladimir Kozlov won the titles before dropping them back to Gabriel and Slater at Elimination Chamber. John Cena and The Miz held the titles for less than 5 minutes, before dropping them back to Gabriel and Slater. 57 days later, Kane and The Big Show won the titles in a popular win that once again gave hope that WWE were going to establish a decent tag team, however, due to injury (it appears Big Show is injured), just over a month later, Kane and The Big Show dropped the titles to the team of David Otunga and Michael McGillicutty. What happened with John Cena and The Miz's brief title reign, was a huge knock to the divisions already damaged reputation. In the past we've seen some great storylines built out of reluctant tag team champions, including... Shawn Michaels and Stone Cold Steve Austin in 1997 The Rock and Mankind in 1999 Booker T and Goldust in 2002 Edge and Randy Orton in 2007 Shawn Michaels and John Cena in 2007 MVP and Matt Hardy in 2007 Out of the 3 longest holding tag teams (Morrison and Miz, Carlito and Primo, London and Kendrick) only Morrison, Miz and Primo remain with WWE. Primo is a staple on Superstars and despite a promising start in WWE, has not been given much to do since Carlito was released. John Morrison has been stuck on the upper mid card since 2008, he has yet to break through the glass ceiling. Miz meanwhile has gone on to be one of the proverbial main eventers of the WWE, defeating Randy Orton for the WWE Championship, Miz has gone onto headline Wrestlemania. Despite Miz's rise to the top, he has taken backseat to the Rock/Cena feud and decidedly lost the WWE title to Cena. The feud with Cena has grown stale and WWE has recently set in motion the next challengers for Cena's title. With TNA theres not much to say. Their tag team division has been held together by the strength of two teams, Beer Money Inc and The Motor City Machine Guns. With rumors of TNA splitting up Roode and Storm, perhaps Storm will go onto reform America's Most Wanted with former partner Chris Harris, to replace the loss of Beer Money Inc. Or TNA could do the logical thing and use the imminent break up to establish a new tag team. In TNA there is a lot of unused talent, taking a backseat to the veterans and main eventers, surely creating a couple of new tag team out of this unused talent wouldn't be too much of a stretch? We all know TNA's attitudes however, some of which mirror WWE's. So what can be done exactly? Can these two organisations justify having a tag team division anymore? WWE has made it clear that titles (with the exception of the WWE Championship) are taking a backseat to the talent. WWE PPVs seem to sell on the backs of John Cena and Randy Orton alone, with the occasional feature of someone like The Rock to keep the traditional fan buyrates up. TNA is now trying to capitalise on WWE eliminating wrestling as the focus of their product, perhaps this will signal a change in attitudes towards such things as the Tag Team division. Thoughts?

This is something i've been thinking about a lot recently. Although this is something people are sick about hearing, with WWE's so called 'Expansion' annoucement, it got me thinking about how Vince's greatest success has seemingly become his most embarassing achievement. Now before I proceed, I want to iterate that I'm not going to be focusing on Vince himself, I do not know him personally so I will merely be writing about his character from a public perspective, anyway. No one can deny that Vince McMahon is the greatest Wrestling Promoter of all time, he saw things the business was lacking and had the balls to go all in. A lot of people resent his actions in the early 1980's, he broke territorial agreements and incurred the ire of many an old school promoter, but Vince was right to do so. I'm not saying it was morally acceptable to break agreements, I think Vince should have voiced his intention publically to create an International Product and maybe come to some sort of agreement with the territories, perhaps a talent exchange? Just anything to offer some level of compensation. Anyway, Vince and the WWF, set the benchmark for Professional Wrestling in general, it was as much about Entertainment as it was 'Rasslin'. Vince took an already established product, poured some sugar on it and used his business savvyness to take it to an International market. This level of success has obviously influenced Vince, in such as way that he feels he could duplicate the success in other ventures. We saw Vince try his hand at promoting Sports Events, starting a competitive Bodybuilding organisation, a professional American Football league and most recently with a Film Production studio. Whilst WWE Films is reasonably successful in the Home Video market, the Films have recieved critical panning, bomb in theater sales and now Wal-Mart has become the sole stockist. While disguised as an 'Elusive Contract', the Wal-Mart deal is in fact meaningless. The way I see it, Wal-Mart offered WWE a sum for the contract, because the DVDs sell at the prices Wal-Mart set and bomb at other retailers. I feel that WWE films will eventually dry up, with their PG initative, they have restricted the variety of movies they can produce, limiting it to a family audience. And thats another thing I'd like to bring up. Whilst I think WWE's PG initiative is a good thing, I think they've gone overboard in applying it to all their subsidaries. The success in a Entertainment Corporation, depends on whether the Corporation is able to create multiple facets that are aimed at all demographics. Take MTV for example. MTV show television shows aimed at Family Audience, Pre-Teens, Teenagers, Young Adults and Mature Audiences. Similarily, the range of their music videos follow this pattern. At the moment Vince has been going on about WWE creating their own Network. If WWE want their 'Cable Network' to succeed, they will have to apply this type of MTV approach to their programming. Whilst I can see Raw staying on a prime time network, if this idea comes to fruition, I imagine all other programming will be moved to this network (its possible Smackdown may stay with a prime time network also, but with its erratic viewing figures, it doesn't seem likely). I know a bit about the Entertainment Industry and like I said, If WWE plans on doing this they will NEED to aim their network at multiple demographics. The most worrying thing about Vince McMahon in my opinion is his often bizarre view on his product. WWE is no longer classed as Wrestling, despite the fact nobody will ever see it as anything but Wrestling. I can understand that Vince, in the 1980's slightly rebranded his product in order to differentiate it from his competition and bring it to a wider audience, but nowadays it seems as if he's become obsessed with rebranding. In the last few years, WWE personel have gone from being known as Superstar's to Entertainer's to Performer's to Superstar's again. It seems that Vince gets pissed off with some facets of his product, changes the lingo and then realises how silly it is and changes it again. Vince is looking for mainstream acceptance in the Business and Entertainment industries, but it seems he doesn't realise that this sort of obsessive rebranding is making his company and indeed, himself, seem like a joke. A lot of Wrestling Journalists and Dirt Sheet Writers follow similar opinions on Vince. Matthew Randazzo for example, refers to Vince as something along the lines of a "Coke'd up, Roid addict who can still be a genius on a good day". Other writers seem to think that only Triple H, Stephanie and Pat Patterson are able to make Vince see sense. Jim Cornette and others who dislike Kevin Dunn, seem to think that its Kevin Dunn (who apparently can't stand Wrestling) and his followers who are influencing Vince by using his disdain for old school wrestling to encourage him to rebrand. Whatever the case, it seems like WWE is in danger of alienating their fanbase. On one hand, to me this seems like WWE are creating a unique situation in order to turn somebody Heel. On the other hand it seems as if WWE are just taking the "Now thats out of the way, lets get back to the way we do things" approach. The amount of fan backlash in the last couple of days has been phenomenal. Whilst I think its a silly idea, I'm not upset by what has happened, rather as I said, I see the potential for WWE to alienate a large portion of their fanbase, by pulling off stunts such as this, for no apparent reason, as of yet. Thoughts?

I included Ricky Steamboat because I seemed to recall him having a Heel run in WCW, however upon closer research, I was wrong. I made this thread to create a discussion around my opinion that WWE is missing an Angle type performer. Honestly, when I think about this type of performer and the qualities I described in my original post, I think of Kurt Angle. He rose to the top of the world's biggest promotion inside of a year, within 2 years his wrestling ability was on par with the likes of Bret Hart, Chris Benoit, William Regal, etc,. There are very few Professional Wrestlers around that have been considered an all time great within the space of 10 years. Obviously there are other and possibly better examples

I've noticed that recently the WWE seems to be missing a performer I like to class as The 'Angle'. This term is named after Kurt Angle and below i'll describe what makes an 'Angle' An Angle must be able to get over equally well whether as a Face or a Heel An Angle must be an excellent worker, who can not just work well within their own style, but be versatile and adapt to their opponents style An Angle must be able to Sell convincingly, no matter the size or style of the opponent An Angle must have either an impressive or unique finishing move or in the case of a Submission move, it must always be applied correctly and give the impression that it could legitimately hurt someone An Angle must have excellent Stamina and Conditioning and be able to perform regular matches in excess of 20 minutes Those are just a few rules, obviously. Based on those rules, WWE by my reckoning doesn't have any performers currently of this caliber. In 2002-2004, WWE had 4 of these workers (Kurt Angle, Shawn Michaels, Chris Benoit and Brock Lesnar) and probably because of this, WWE had some of its best ever matches during this two year time frame. I think its a vital part of any Wrestling promotion, to have at least one Wrestler of this performance caliber. In TNA they have the trope namer (if you like) in Kurt Angle. Before his TNA days, Samoa Joe was considered this throughout his Independent run. In NJPW, you have the likes of Keiji Mutoh and most recently Shinsuke Nakamura. In the WWE prior to 2002, you had the likes of Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Ricky Steamboat, Curt Hennig and even Randy Savage. Thoughts?

It puzzles me why Vince doesn't just create a Parent Company (similar to how he had Titan Sports Inc, as the parent company for WWF and his other ventures like the WBF). WWE would be run as a Wrestling or Sports Entertainment product and not used as a basis to launch Vince's other creative ventures. I'm sure the WWE Board could easily distribute the budget according to each subsidary.

I wonder if Vince's penchant for 'Entertainment' terms is going to get worse, I mean, soon things might be like this... Match becomes Contest or Challenge Referee becomes Official Ring Announcer becomes Narrator Its a very, very strange concept. The ironic thing is, McMahon is doing these types of things, because he has an obsession with being 'Accepted' by the Entertainment and Business industry, yet he's attracting criticism from his fanbase and its almost certain that others in the entertainment industry will be laughing at the attempt to distance themselves from 'Wrestling' . Its a worrying possibility that eventually they may do away with Title Belts and replace them with Trophies...

WCW Saturday Night 1992, but only if you are alright with pure mat based wrestling. Bill Watts decided to make Top Rope moves illegal and there numerous creative splats going on around this time. But theres a lot of great characters in their prime lurking around like the Steiner Brothers, Sting, Vader, Ric Flair. etc

Slightly Off Topic, but people tend to bring up Triple H's Wrestlemania losing streak. So I thought i'd examine it. Wrestlemania 12: Loss (Vs Ultimate Warrior) Wrestlemania 13: Win (Vs Goldust) Wrestlemania 14: Win (Vs Owen Hart) Wrestlemania 15: Loss (Vs Kane) Wrestlemania 16: Win (Vs The Rock/Mick Foley/Big Show) Wrestlemania 17: Loss (Vs Undertaker) Wrestlemania 18: Win (Vs Chris Jericho) Wrestlemania 19: Win (Vs Booker T) Wrestlemania 20: Loss (Vs Chris Benoit/Shawn Michaels) Wrestlemania 21: Loss (Vs Batista) Wrestlemania 22: Loss (Vs John Cena) Wrestlemania 24: Loss (Vs Randy Orton/John Cena) Wrestlemania 25: Win (Vs Randy Orton) Wrestlemania 26: Win (Vs Sheamus) Wrestlemania 27: Loss (Vs Undertaker) As you can see, so far, Triple H has appeared at 15 Wrestlemanias and has 7 Wins and 8 Losses. He did have a four year losing streak, which maybe a bit strange for a performer of his caliber. The point is, if Triple H is planning retirement after next years Wrestlemania (as its being rumored), then would his ego drive him to having a balanced Win/Loss ratio? Or would he Wrestle (sorry 'Entertain') a Retirement Stipulation match? Especially against the Undertaker?

I don't think they will ever end the Streak. I think Undertaker will retire undefeated at Wrestlemania. Like other posters have stated, there is just no right way to the end the streak anymore, even a talented rookie ending it would do nothing for them. I do agree with points that other posters have made about Wrestlemania needing to tone down from just being about Undertaker. I think that the Undertaker match needs to be in the middle of the card, although his matches usually steal the show, I think if WWE made more effort to put on a main event that had an exciting build, then it would make all the difference. Lets look at recent Wrestlemania's where Taker hasn't been involved in the main event, but stolen the show. Wrestlemania 23: Shawn Michaels Vs John Cena (Undertaker Vs Batista recieved numerous match of the year awards and was arguably the match on the show that the fans were most invested in) Wrestlemania 25: Randy Orton Vs Triple H (Shawn Michaels Vs Undertaker completely stole the show, a 30 minute classic which contained everything that a good wrestling should have. Triple H Vs Orton meanwhile, was a complete borefest, the crowd was dead, the wrestlers did nothing but have a brawl and Triple H won decidedly, with no kickouts) Wrestlemania 27: John Cena Vs The Miz (Arguably one of the most promising, but disappointing Wrestlemanias. Undertaker Vs Triple H stole the show, no other match, with the exception of maybe Rey Mysterio Vs Cody Rhodes and/or Edge Vs Alberto Del Rio, contained any real substance. John Cena Vs Miz, failed to promote any interest and the match itself was more about The Rock)

If we're talking about 'Best' in terms of Pure Wrestling ability, I'd have to say Scorpio. Obviously if you look at charisma, psychology and mic skills, its got to be The Rock hands down.

William Regal's matwork is often overlooked. I've always been impressed whenever Regal has been allowed to put on a technical match. Some of his WCW matches, particulary against the likes of Ricky Steamboat is a good example of solid, World class matwork.